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I know it’s the last day of May, but I really need to get my Christmas list in a little bit early this year and I thought that, because you’re an amiable old dude and seeing as it’s summertime, and all that, you’d want something to do. So I’ve got some things lined up to keep you busy

OK, firstly, I’d really like one of these for the end of my little garden. Yes, it’s a log cabin, and seeing as it probably comes from your part of the world I figured it’d be easier & cheaper to ask you nicely for one rather than me buying it, what with the mortgage and credit cards and all that

I’d like to put a nice comfy sofa and my studio gear in there, along with my mountain bike & BMX so that I make room to get my poor old classic car in the garage. Oh, and it’d be really good if you can find one of those “beware of the dog” signs for the door, so that if BBFK ever gets mad at me I can really “be in the doghouse” 😉 That’s why the oh-so-cool ladder and loft space too are needed so that I can unroll my sleeping bag and crash there for the night. Let me know how much head room there is though, please, ‘cos I’ve been in the bottom bunk before and it sucks when you forget the low head-height and bang your cannister.

Secondly (‘cos you’re throwing in the “beware of the dog” sign, right?) you’ll be saving my ass with one of these. No, really. You see, my old mountain bike is a hardtail, i.e. no rear suspension. Plus it’s one of those sports geometry ones – great for short runs, quick single track and general all-round local nuttiness, but on a long trail… Ow! I put a carbon fibre seat post on it to dampen the impact, but my poor buttocks…

This little baby, however, is a Specialized FSR XC Comp, full suspension, hydraulic discs and er… it’s all finished in nice red paintwork, ‘cos that makes it go faster, as did making your hands go all flat & pointy when you ran at school so you could be aerodynamic & streamlined, like, and karate chop your way through the air and win Like I said, you’ll really be saving my ass – I don’t wanna end up having farmer giles or anything 😉

And lastly, I don’t really need this, I’ll admit it, it’s most definitely an object of desire as opposed to a genuine need, but to make a nice round number (3 is rounded. 2 is sort of a bit rounded and 1… nah! As for 4? Well you can forget that, 3 is the business and a classic number for wishes) we have to have a 3rd item (you’re throwing in the sign with the cabin, remember?) So, yes, how about one of these please? A nice little Canon EOS 350D. I don’t know why I want this as much as I need the cabin and the bike, but some people keep rubbing it in 😉

So, I still have a packet of last year’s mince pies and a bottle of port you can have, (tawny not ruby) plus there’s some potatoes for your reindeer. I know they prefer carrots but I don’t have any right now, but if it’s a problem just let me know and in return for making all my wishes come true I’ll get Rudolph & Co some of those orange pointy vegetables

Oh, and failing all this I’ll willing swap the aforementioned three wishes if you could ship my BBFK over, pronto like; I have… er… a few things I need her to attend to, seeing as it’s been a year since we first met, and we have a nice bottle of Russian bubbly that’s been in the fridge since the New Year. You can have a glass of that, plus the port and potatoes if you get the girl safely to Farnborough

So, to compensate for rough tough Lever having gone to a flower show, I kept the yin yang (pH?) balance by hitting a bar in the city of Gloucester to be an extra for the new Nick Love movie, Outlaw.

The story goes that the police are just not up to the job of dealing with the rising tide of violent crime, so a group of guys take the law into their own hands!

Despite signing up for this film before there was even a cast list, it was a relief to see Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings, Ronin, Patriot Games, Troy, Sharpe (TV) …), Danny Dyer (The Football Factory, The Business, Mean Machine, Human Traffic…) and Lennie James (Snatch, 24 hour Party People…) on the roster.

If you get to see the film next year, look out for the pub scene where the Outlaws hatch their plans… the guy behind Sean & Danny, hustling the fruit machines is yours truly; it’ll probably be one of those “look, that’s my elbow” moments, but who cares? It was a bloody good laugh As one of the lads said, it was like being in The Truman Show where, right on cue, we start going about our business whilst reallity focuses on the main characters.

Oh, and about beer on film sets… plenty of people were given poncy bottles of alco-pops but I was lucky enough to have a pint of beer… though it was that Kalliber non-alcoholic stuff and to make the scene a little more reallistic I kept swigging it – under the lights and being on this shot for about 4 hours it was warm, flat and disgusting.

And a big shout out to Rich & to Chris; we were the first three amigos there and the last three to leave. Oh, and Chris runs the Danny Dyer website BTW 😉

UPDATE: Tuesday – And here’s a hilarious little news snippet I found on the BBC website about the filming of Outlaw… More tea, vicar?

Now what does a beer-drinking, football-loving, typical British boy do on a wet, rainy Saturday? Go to the Chelsea Flower Show, that’s what!

A friend of mine got a ticket for his birthday because he’s just mad on gardening, and seeing as I couldn’t afford to get to Rebekah & Erik’s wedding in Texas (I wish you two all the best and I hope you had a perfect day) I ended up trotting along to the show.

Now that may seem odd for someone like me, but it was quite a good event. I particularly enjoyed feature gardens with their landscaping and architecture, especially the Aussie garden with a sunken seating area (complete with fireplace) covered barbecue area (what else?) and a wacky table that water flowed through and cascaded out the other side. I asked if I could sit in their garden and have a few tinnies, but all they were offering was bloody Fosters!

The flowers were interesting until about 2pm when I just switched off – I’d seen enough. Unless you’re REALLY into your flowers and all the Latin names and subtleties of the varieties, then 6 hours is probably the limit of the attention span.

Oh, and for any of you gardening types, yes we did see Alan Titchmarsh in one of those Wimbledon centre court-esque embarrassingly British “Come on, Tim” moments, and Joe Swift, but alas no foxy Rachel De Thame.

Ooops, sorry, got a bit carried away there; I was thinking of that excerpt from The Prisoner that also opened the track of the same name by Iron Maiden on their Number of the Beast LP 😉

What I’m really talking about is my B team, my underdogs, as I mentioned here. You see, the thing is that on the US Soccer Men’s National Team website there’s a graphic like so…

…saying that “Less than 20 years ago microscopic islands laughed at us, now we rank Top 10.”

Now… microscopic islands? I’ll leave that to the geographers and marketeers to try and explain how land mass, smaller than a continent, roughly equivalent in size schema to plankton and yet large enough to harbour life of enough power to be able to be heard ridiculing American football skills within the last 2 decades can actually exist! The fact that there’s still a remnant of hurt and a vengeful ad means they must be pretty spectacular to punch so far above their weight and yet to have landed a blow felt below the belt. Aw. *lip out*

But it’s the boast of being top 10 that struck me! Holy shit, in the FIFA world rankings currently (today, 25th May 2006, at 4pm GMT) the US football team are joint 5th with Spain! Damn, that blows away the title of this post because me and BBFK were checking it out at 2pm and they were joint 6th!

As you can see England are a mere 10th, meaning that the US are also ranked higher than Argentina, France & Portugal too with Italy a lowly 13th and Germany way down in 19th place!

Can you adam & eve it?

There’s an England friendly tonight against Belarus, who are 65th, so bye bye biking, I’m watching the match.

And as for those microscopic islands… could they mean Guam or American Samoa? (203rd and 205th respectively)

Europe, unfairly credited for the dire cheesey pop music that huge swathes of its ancient & cultured civilisations vote for every year in the Eurovision Song Contest, has picked a METAL band as this years winners!

Lordi, hailing from Finland, came on in full make-up & costume looking like a monster freakshow and performed “Hard Rock Hallelujiah” to a backdrop of fireworks and a demonic lead singer with a battle-axe mike stand and giant batwings that unfurled for the final chorus. This has GOT to win, I laughed and texted my vote. And lo & behold they WON! LMAO.

…said the boy, after having stared at me and the car for a good 30 seconds.

Waiting in the fast lane for the lights to change, the wooly-headed ten year old looked down from on high upon me with a look of utter disgust & disdain, probably learned from his father: the owner of a brand new SUV, clean and untouched by mud, unused for either Sports or Utility, yet qualifying only as a vehicle.

And the ten year old wound down his passenger window to ask me that very valid question.

Why America?

Why is the guy, an Englishman born in Scotland, in the Swedish car built in Belgium, flying a St. George Cross AND a star-spangled banner here in the home counties of England? Why?

“Well…” I started, as I dropped my window to respond to the ten-year old’s question…

“My girlfriend is American and this is her car, so I fly an English flag for me and a U.S. flag for her. Plus you always have to have a B team in the World Cup, an underdog, if you will, that you can cheer on and support besides your own team – so the U.S.A. is totally appropriate don’t you think? :)”

But he already had his window up before I had a chance to reply…

Ten years old and already looking down on his elders, turning his nose up, experiencing the “status” afforded by the pointless vehicle, and not waiting for an answer… nice one, kid, you’ll go far in the corporate world… unless we can make the planet a better place before you get a chance to inherit it…

From last weeks local newspaper: Now, I know the poor little girl must be traumatized, but is there really some nonce around here that looks as freaky as this? What a weirdo! Look at the state of his hair – you could drive a herd of very small wildebeest through that centre-parting.

Anyways, if you see this freak then;

a) laughb) break his legs*c) put the boot in just to make sure*d) let the coppers know where you left him

*foreverblueskies.com and its cohorts take a responsible and upstanding attitude toward moral and social responsibilities and therefore do not condone the use of violence toward pervs and lowlife scum like this

My girl cat has bought home all manner of trinkets over the last few years… a toy mouse, many live mice, birds, a bird nest, jumbo car sponge & bits of wood… but most often she brings home pine cones which litter mine and my neighbours garden even though we are way beyond the fall circle of the nearest Scots Pine…

I took my buddy to the pub last night for a few birthday beers and we sat outside in the warm spring air, watching the world go by…

There was a short stocky guy at the bar when we walked in. He obviously thought he was a bit hard and liked everyone to know that, with his muscle shirt and stance like he had stinging nettles for armpit hair. So when he rang his mate on his mobile phone he just HAD to announce LOUDLY that he was going to BOXING that night.

Outside there was a large number of chav wankers sitting on a wall next to the chip shop… I can’t remember if there were ten or not… but if one chav wanker should accidentally fall… there’d be nine chav wankers sitting on the wall…

The bloke who thought he was hard appeared next in the car park shouting loudly at some builder-type guy, mouthing off, shouting, acting the big man, giving this over-exaggerated swagger like he was the toughest guy in Farnborough… REAL tough when you consider he’s holding a beer bottle in one hand… So the builder guy walks away and our tough guy launches a bottle at him, which bounces off and lands on the road in a few sharp pieces… really upstanding, nice one!

The landlady comes out and apologises for their behaviour.

I go pick up the glass before someone gets a puncture.

On a hot spring night you have to leave the windows open – even the pub toilet windows. So I can’t work out what smells worse – urinals with piss or urinals with those blue chemical cubes they use to make it smell “fresher”…?

Needless to say we moved from the table near that window to one nearer the smell of cigarettes…

Talking of which… some chavs walked past and asked if we had any spare cigarettes… My mind kept saying “fuck off” which would have been rude, to be replaced by “be off with you, child of proud social deprivation” only for my tact & diplomacy circuits to finally present “Nah, sorry mate” to my vocal outbox.

Why does almost every car that drives past have a BIG EXHAUST and have to be driven hard in second gear? When chavs get driving licences this is exactly what happens.

What is it with BMW drivers? Know from this day hence that “Hey everybody look at me I’ve got a BMW” means “I’m overcompensating for my tiny tiny penis”

Why is it that just when you’re about to walk down to the curry house some friends turn up and keep you at the pub for longer than you intended? Don’t you just hate that?

Walking home on a hot night is great.

Biking to the pub on a sunny morning to rescue your car instead of having a tea break is also great… I’ll be back in 10…